Pam explores local knitting groups and yarn shops, critiques patterns and shares her wisdom on techniques for improving your craft.

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Monthly Archives: January 2018

Willow & Lark is LoveKnitting’s own line of natural-fiber yarns. Loveknitting.com has a sale going through Jan. 31.

At Tricha Malcolm’s suggestion, I introduced myself to the folks at LoveKnitting’s booth in the Vogue Knitting Live Marketplace and asked if I could interview someone. I am on the LoveKnitting email list, but I didn’t know a lot about the company, other than that they sell yarn. I learned the company does a lot more than that.

First I interviewed Helen Griffith, sister of LoveKnitting’s founder, Edward Griffith. As an expert on e-commerce, Edward has had experience building online communities for websites in the United Kingdom. For example, if you are a teacher, you might enjoy checking out the website for TES, an organization based in London that has provided resources for educators for years. Edward set up their website so that teachers can post lesson plans, job openings, and a host of other things. His website created an online community that reflects the profession that TES has served for more than a century. While it does have job postings from other countries, it’s primarily a UK website.

Edward’s girlfriend is an avid knitter, and through her, he came to see the world of crafts as another area where a website could help build a community. So rather than set up a website for a client, Edward created his own company five years ago, and created LoveKnitting as the first in a series of online communities and websites devoted to crafters. There is also a LoveCrochet.com site which has all the same yarns and free patterns as LoveKnitting. The overall comany name is LoveCrafts

LoveKnitting wants to inspire knitters, enabling them to buy supplies, share pictures of their project once they’’ve made it so that it can inspire others, share patterns and more, all in one place on the web. There are teaching videos, discussions… everything you’d want in a community.

So I said to Helen, “Well, the elephant in the room is Ravelry.”

And she said, “No, it’s not the elephant in the room. We actually work together. Casey (one of Ravelry’s founders) actually commissioned us to create software for Ravely to be able to collect VAT on its sales.” (VAT is Value Added Tax, or sales tax. And that’s a complicated calculation when you consider how many government agencies collect it!)

Helen asserted that Ravelry is largely focused on the United States, while Love Knitting is more global. I’m not sure I agree with that, because I’ve made international friends on Ravelry, but I’ll let that slide. She did agree that knitting in Europe has different characteristics. Right now, she believes, European knitters tend to be older, and they are more likely to knit flat, while Americans increasingly prefer circular needles, and again, there are more young Americans knitting. Again, I am not sure I entirely agree because a lot of knitters who come to my events are older and many of the knitters who do the In Stitches charity projects are older. But it may be that the younger knitters tend to join different groups and make different things. American knitters tend to be all ages.

We also discussed the popularity of knitting in our respective countries. I told her about a man I met who ran a yarn outlet in Manhattan in the ‘80s, and he said one in every five women in Europe knitted, while in the US, maybe one in 20 woman knitted. I told Helen that my perception is that in the 3 decades since then, that statistic has reversed, with more women per capita knitting in the US now, and Helen readily agreed.

“In the UK, knitting is largely taught by grandparents,” she said.

LoveKnitting.com has more than 90,000 patterns, both free and for sale. Helen said that designers keep the revenue from their pattern sales. A percentage of LoveKnittng sales go to Women for Women. I think Griffith said this is a charity that has been repeatedly chosen by the designers and that this choice is periodically reviewed and renewed.

LoveKnitting has a Facebook page and a very big mailing list with emails at least once a week —often twice a week. Patterns are featured in some emails, as are yarn promotions. LoveKnitting carries an extensive array of yarns, from big-box acrylics to high-end luxury fibers. Most customers and users of LoveKnitting.com tend to be from the UK and Germany but also there are many users from Australia, France and Spain, as well as many other European countries. The company has three big promotions a year, in January, July and November.

Helen says that LoveKnitting is a great place to work, and that they look for people who are smart and kind as well as “makers.” They have knitters, crocheters and computer coders among their “makers.”

According to a display at Vogue Knitting Live, the name Willow & Lark harkens back to LoveKnitting’s British heritage.

I also had some time to talk with Kate Rathgaber, the general manager of LoveCrafts’ new North American venture. She has a 201 area code, so she must be in New Jersey, although I do believe their offices are in New York. LoveKnitting opened its American offices in September, and the company wants every American knitter to know about them. At Vogue Knitting Live, they had a booth at one of the entrances to the Marketplace, complete with displays of their proprietary yarn brand, Willow and Lark, which for the most part specializes in natural fibers.

I’ll have more about my conversation witih Kate in upcoming posts.

One thing that Kate and Helen mentioned which I haven’t explored is that loveknitting wants to support bloggers. The company also wants to support charity work, and Kate expressed an interest in helping with the Stitch & Pitch game at Patriots Stadium, which this year will be July 13.

It was good to learn a lot more about the origins and goals of LoveKnitting. It sounds like this is a company we’ll be hearing about for a long time to come.

A few years ago, I covered a Mansion in May that was filled with rooms decorated in neutral tones. Many of the designers said that after a decade filled with saturated color, they were shifting to neutral pallets because they are relaxing. Maybe that’s why so many of the sweaters in the fashion shows at Vogue Knitting Live were in neutral tones. Or maybe it’s a shift to natural, undyed yarns.

It seemed to be that color was largely missing from this year’s fashion shows at Vogue Knitting Live. This sweater has some bands with hints of color, but they’re not exactly popping with color, are they?

But I’m not buying it. Sorry, Trisha Malcolm. The sweater shapes were lovely, and I especially liked a few sweaters that had rounded edges at the bottom — very flattering. But I’m not a big fan of so much beige and gray. Especially from Noro.

I remember interviewing Kaffe Fasset several years ago, after reading his autobiography. He had said something about exploring textures at one point, early in his residence in the U.K., so I asked him if he’d ever considered designing a collection of cabled sweaters. His answer was basically that he is known for his color designs and he wasn’t about to change that.

So when a company such as Noro goes neutral, you have to ask yourself why. Are they trying to relax? Explore a new niche? I’m not having it. Noro needs to be brilliant, colorful, dramatic. Not neutral fade-into-the-background beige, gray, ecru colorways. Ah, there were a few Noro designs with deep blues and fiery oranges in the same garment, and those opposite colors work well together, although they’re not my first choice. But so many of them were not colorful at all.

Of the three fashion shows I watched, the Vogue Knitting show, the Rowan show and Noro, virtually all of them were dominated by ecru, grays, and beiges. I loved the cabled sweaters, and ecru shows the cables off like no other color. But if yoked sweaters and Fair Isles are the trend this season, we need more color.

I know, my photos are dark, but really, there wasn’t much color to brighten them up. This is a Fair Isle design done in neutral colors.

I snapped a lot of photos and video clips during the fashion shows, and last night I went through them, trying to pull together a 2 minute video for this blog. I’ve got it down to less than 5 minutes now, and virtually all of it features sweaters and shawls in neutral colors. Ok, there is one colorful plaid skirt and a plaid shawl. I’m not saying the neutrals are not beautifully crafted, flattering , etc. But color is largely conspicuous by its absense.

When I think about all the independent dyers who came to sell in the Marketplace, their brilliant colors and the popularity of gradient dying for shawls… There was one sweater that had gradients that ranged from ecru to dark gray and back again. But no color gradients. Are they really so “last year?” I don’t think so.

For me, knitting is a colorful experience. Yes, I knit Aran sweaters in ecru, and yes, I wear browns and even black. But I’m not giving up on my aquas, turquoise, teal, fascia, raspberry, wine and pink. I want my colors. They motivate me, inspire me and cheer me up, giving me energy and a zest for life. The fact that I didn’t react against all the neutrals until three or four days after the event is a testament to the beauty and design of the featured sweaters. But in retrospect, I sorely missed the colors.

In her pattern-writing class, Deborah Newton said that people never knit their projects in the yarn you use for your pattern. I may knit some of the sweaters I saw at Vogue Knitting Live this year, but I’m probably going to change the yarn. And not just because I have colorful yarns in my stash. Colorful yarns are in my stash because they are in my heart.

Every year, thousands of knitters com to Vogue Knitting Live in New York. They come f rom the New York metropolitan area, of course, but they also come from other places. I met fellow knitters from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and elsewhere. They come because they love their craft, want to hang out with others who love the craft, want to learn more skills and want to see fashions and yarn.

Many of us take a class, although the classes are expensive. Instead, some of us attend a lecture, which still costs money but less than a class. And on Saturday and Sunday, we attend fashion shows or panel discussions. I didn’t see too many panel discussions this year. The fashion shows were all on the stage on the sixth-floor Marketplace.

This is a close-up of the amazing backdrop to the fashion-show stage at Vogue Knitting Live.

I’m going to write about fashion shows in my next post because I took a lot of video and photos, and I don’t think the lighting was good enough for me to use most of them. The video I’m showing in this post is a gallery of mostly snap shots of the Givency-esque backdrop for the fashion shows, based on Pointelism. Just as Monet painted scenes of Givency with tiny points of paint, some knitter(s) knitted small squares, maybe 2-by-2 inches, maybe smaller, and stitched them together. Up close, they look like an amazing blanket. But far away, the spots of color merge into a picture. Watch the video to see what picture it was.

What was at the Marketplace?

A lot of people only come to the marketplace, which is all about top quality yarn and tools for our craft. I was bitterly disappointed that there were no Addi needles, and frankly, I didn’t see a great variety of brands. There was a vendor selling hand-crafted wooden needles, and I saw a lot of Knit Picks lines. Clover had a booth. Kollage and Addi were conspicuous for their absense.

What I did buy this year was a lucet, a wooden instrument that looks like a smooth upside-down “A” that you can use to make a two-stitch i-cord. It looked like fun to use, and I thought it would be useful when I make gift bags. I’m looking forward to using it.

Another thing I bought was a shawl pin with a white rose made of carved mother-of-pearl. It has a wooden shaft that is thicker than many shawl pins, but I knit sweaters and shawls with worsted weight, not sock yarn, and this pin is just fine for that. In fact, I’m hoping that it will be less likely to work itself loose than some of the pins I own or have lost because they did work themselves loose.

There were lovely yarns there. Carol Sulkowski had an alpaca-silk-cashmere blend of turquoise yarn that was to die for, but it was sock weight and expensive. I would have had to buy two skeins and knit them together if I added them to anything in my stash to make a sweater or shawl, and honestly, I’m broke. I couldn’t justify it. And besides, I’m not buying yarn unless I have to this year (like to finish a project.) So this is the second year in a row that I didn’t buy yarn at VKL. I’m sure yarn will find its way to me in other ways.

Nicky Epstein took swatches from all her books and magazine designs and sewed them into these three adorable 6-foot teddy bears, on display at Vogue Knitting Live near one of the Marketplace ballrooms. They were a bit hit.

However, if you like independent dyers and luxury fibers, you’ll find them in abundance at Vogue Knitting Live. Dragonfly Fibers and Molly Makes were there, but there were also plenty of dyers I’ve never heard of. And if you are interested in independent mills, Green Mountain Spinnery was there. Lion Brand partnered with London Kay this year, but I think they had a smaller presence than I remember from other years.

There also were yarn shops, including Central Jersey’s own Do Ewe Knit from Westfield, who were selling yarn in the Marketplace. And Stephen West’s yarn shop from Amsterdam was selling yarn, too. Love Knitting had a big presence at one of the entrances to the Marketplace, and I had a chance to interview two of the people from this new company. More about them later.

All in all, I spent most of my time sitting in seats watching or waiting for the fashion shows on Saturday. I had a lovely time working on the gray hat that I started last week. I had some black yarn and added some Fair Isle patterns. And when it was all finished, instead of adding it to the supply of hats for the homeless, I gave it to Bobby, one of Alex’s coworkers, because he had asked for a hat late last winter, and I never got around to making him one. This hat was exactly his colors, and he loved it.

I especially liked the garments on display from this yarn company. Of course, I stupidly forgot to write the company’s name down.

I had planned to go to VKL all three days, so I didn’t take a lot of photos of yarn on Saturday. But when I got home Saturday night, I decided that while I probably had enough energy to go back for one more day and I did have a couple of interviews scheduled, I would l probably wipe myself out if I went back. And the more I thought about it, the more I could find reasons to stay home. So I don’t have a lot of photos of yarn to share from this year’s Marketplace. You’ll just have to go next year to enjoy the yarny-goodness for yourself.

At Vogue Knitting Live, in one of the halls leading to the marketplace, there is a long table with sample yarns and knitting needles that you can try out. It’s call the Yarn Tasting.

This post was written Friday afternoon, Jan. I2, but edited and posted on Saturday, Jan 13.

I arrived at the Marriott Marquis Hotel at 8:30 a.m., half an hour before my class with Deborah Newton began. I stopped to get breakfast at the Starbucks at the street level, but the line was too long, so I ended up going straight to class and was glad I did. The room was filling up fast,

It was a three-hour class about pattern writing, but the class also touched on fitting and designing. I thought I knew a lot about pattern writing and mostly signed up because I love Deborah. I also thought she’d give me some inspiration to finally write up my patterns for one of my Aran hats. She did give me some good ideas, but more importantly, she had us all thinking about all the elements of writing a pattern that I’d rarely considered before.

For example, she encouraged us to write the sweater pattern before we knit a sweater we’ve designed. She said this is the only way, because you will solve virtually all the design issues before you knit, so things will go much faster.

Deborah Newton taught an inspiring class about writing patterns.

Deborah had detailed hand-outs and taught from them, but we didn’t get much time to put what we were learning into practice. Afterwards, one of the students and I were talking, and she said that while she enjoyed the class, she wished we’d had more time to practice a few things. I honestly didn’t feel that way. I felt that so much of my work over the years had prepared me for the class and Deborah’s instruction took me to the next level, especially that challenge to write the pattern and then knit from it.

“The sweater is beautiful, but the real product is the pattern,” Deborah said. “So the gauge, the row count, everything must be exactly the same in the pattern and the sweater. Otherwise, the sweater is all wrong. The pattern is the law.”

She also said that you write patterns for other people, not ourselves. The pattern is there to convey your ideas. Every garment is a unique combination of shape and yarn, guided by the standard sizes provided by the Craft Council. Sizing between increments is generally half-an-inch for the smaller sizes and yarns that are worsted weight or lighter. Heavier yarns and patterns for heavier women trend towards full-inch increments between sizes.

Another thing I learned was that Deborah knits the swatch for a project, then writes the pattern, then knits a sleeve (if it’s a sweater) to check the gauge. Sometimes she knits a side of the front instead.

You can find a lot of the wisdom that Deborah taught us in her two latest books, “Finishing School” and “For Good Measure.” But it was really helpful to me to hear her in person because it reinforced what I had read.

I will be writing a lot more about Vogue Knitting Live throughout the weekend. Keep an eye out for my blog posts and (I hope) videos. I haven’t figured out if I can use the hotel’s Internet access, so These posts will have to wait until I get home to post them.

After writing in my column about how I needed a break from charity knitting, I took a look at the calendar this week and decided I had better use the time between now and Jan. 19 to make some hats for the homeless. We are making hats for Elijah’s Promise in New Brunswick, Mercy House in Perth Amboy and the Somerset County Community Development office in Somerville that they can distribute during the Point in Time Census on Jan 23/24. I haven’t made as many hats this year, so I decided that wasn’t fair and I’d better get busy.

I had some gray Simply Soft yarn that was staring at me acusingly, so I grabbed a 16-inch circular needle (size 7, Addi, of course) and cast on 100 stitches for another Alex’s Favorite beanie. I’m making the cuff nice and deep so that the wearer can turn it up and double it for extra warmth around the ears. When I get to the body of this beanie, I will grab another color, probably black, and do a Fair Isle pattern for extra warmth.

It amazes me how many women like gray and black, so this hat will be unisex and I’m sure someone will enjoy it.

In all likelihood, I’ll be working on this hat at Vogue Knitting Live, so for the Fair Isle part, I’m going to pick a simple pattern with maybe four or five rows. Something very symetrical that is easy to memorize. That way, I won’t have to lug a book around with me, unless it’s from one of Mary Jane Mucklestone’s books and I bring it with me to get her autograph. I just want to keep this hat simple and easy to pick up and put down.

It’s hard to believe Vogue Knitting Live starts tomorrow. I will be busy tonight getting ready. I have plastic kniting needles and a book of dog sweaters to bring Deborah Newton, a pad of graph paper to bring to her class and my knitting project, as well as my iPad. And I can’t find the backpack I usually like to take, so I will have to come up with something else.

Steve Malcolm was wondering through the Vogue Knitting Live marketplace when I found him in 2017.

New yarn standard added

You might remember last year that I was excited to introduce knitwear designer Steve Malcolm to David and Jack Blumenthal, president and vice president of Lion Brand Yarn. Steve had designed some super-giant wooden knitting needles and was looking for a yarn manufacturer to partner with in marketing them. David Blumenthal said they had a new jumbo yarn that might be a perfect fit, and they arranged to meet again to discuss it. That was as much as I know. Not sure where the talks went after that.

Well, in the meantime, the Craft Yarn Council, an organization supported by most yarn manufactureres, designers and dyers, has added a seventh standard to its system, super jumbo #7 yarn. This is yarn that is probably going to be used most in finger or arm knitting. It’s slightly heavier than the standard #6 jumbo yarn, and in fact, the standard for #6 has been modified slightly to accomodate it. I don’t know, but I suspect this most-heavy yarn is the kind Steve Malcolm needed for his needles. Maybe I’ll find out more in the VLK Marketplace this weekend.

Take it easy, and if you’re at Vogue Knitting Live in New York this weekend and you see me, please come up and say hello. I would love to meet you!

Here is my new alpaca hat, created for the especially frigid weather we’ve had for the last couple of weeks.

I had a good time knitting that alpaca hat. In the end, I chose one small graph (four rows by 10 stitches) from Mucklestone’s Fair Isle book and another 20 by 20 graph for the main design from her Scandinavian graphs book. The aqua in this photo looks a lot grayer than it is in real life.

Now I find myself with a dilemma about what to work on next. I almost think I would like to try Mom’s sweater — so far as I’ve made it — on her before I try to tackle the sleeves. She wants me to lengthen the sleeves, but because of the wide cuff on the bottom of the sleeves, I am totally intimidated about making them. Do I keep that width at the bottom? Do I reduce the width by one lace repeat? And do I have enough yarn?

And while I try to sort all this out, I realize that the hat is ready to face the lastl day or two of this arctic air mass before it moves out. After the snow today, I think the cold is supposed to fade out into a balmier pattern with temps in the 40s by the end of the week. I will be going to Vogue Knitting Live in my ponchos again. A poncho over a heavy sweater, a turtleneck (especially a silk one) and one of those 30-degree T-shirts from Costco will be sufficient to keep me warm, I think, especially in 40-degree weather. Last year, it started to snow while I was at VKL while all I had to wear home was a poncho over a heavy sweater, and I was ok. And with a poncho, I don’t have to check a coat.

Not sure if I will need such a warm hat next weekend, but I will wear it on Friday anyway because I’ll be interviewing Maryjane Mucklestone and I’d like her to see how I used her graphs.

I am looking forward to an especially warm hat with alpaca yarn and Fair Isle knitting.

Maybe this is a sign of yarn addiction, but often when I look at yarn, it talks to me. It tells me what it wants to be. And I would say that (1) I am deeply addicted to yarn, and (2) most of my yarn has told me what it wants to be. I gave away a lot of yarn in 2017 and intend to give more away this year, but heaven help me, most of the yarn in my yarn room has been shouting at me about what it wants to be, and it’s paralysing because I can’t do it all.

Which is an excellent reason to not buy more yarn for a long time.

And then sometimes, I change my mind and come up with new projects. The yarn messages changed as we faced this bitterly cold artic air mass this week. I’ve finished Becca’s mitts and have given them to her, and I have made excellent progress on Mom’s sweater, correcting some mistakes and getting within a hair of finishing the body. The back is done, and I am almost finished reknitting one of the front sides because the two of them weren’t even at the neck. Alex’s hat is waiting somewhat impatiently in the living room where I can see it every time I sit down to knit.

But it’s bitterly cold outside, and I have discovered that although I have many hats, there are only two that I’m wearing these days, and both of them are Fair Isle hats made of wool/acrylic blends. And the reason for this is that they are warmer. Fair Isle makes the hats double-thick, and the wool in the yarn is definitely warmer than acrylic. Next year, maybe we should make more wool hats for the homeless.

I digress here, but my colleague Bob Makin’s wife is a crocheter, and she crocheted him an adorable hat — sort of an elf hat — which he loves wearing now, but he admits that the crochet has “a lot of holes,” so he’s wearing another hat, a beanie, underneath it. If you are crocheting winter hats, please keep this in mind: single crochet stands up best to cold like this.

Anyway, back to my stash. The alpaca yarn has been calling me like a Greek siren. Alpaca yarn is warmer than wool, and this sub-zero-wind-chill weather we’re having is definitely alpaca weather. I have a lot of alpaca yarn in my stash, and I keep thinking i could at least make myself a hat with some of it.

Some of the alpaca vendors, including Humdinger Alpacas in Philipsburg, sell yarn at the Garden State Sheep and Fiber Festival from an alpaca co-op they belong to. Over the years, I’ve picked up about 6 or 7 skeins. Most of it is dyed, and all of it is buttery soft. Last night, I dug it out of a plastic bin and held it lovingly in my hands, comparing the colors. In the end, I picked two aqua and one darker teal ball, put the others back in the bin. Then I sat down in the living room with the chosen balls, found my beloved size 7 Addi 16-inch needles and cast on 100 stitches. I knitted about 2 inches of ribbing in the lighter color before I went to bed. I am making myself a hat. A Fair Isle version of Alex’s Favorite Beanie. And because I’m interviewing Mary Jane Mucklestone next week at Vogue Knitting Live, I’m going to use charts from one of their books for the Fair Isle part.

About the author

Pam MacKenzie
Our real estate editor, Pam MacKenzie, expresses her creative side in this blog about knitting. Pam learned to knit at age 6, when her friend’s mother made Pam’s doll a dress, and Pam wanted to make more. Her mother wanted her to learn how to sew in high school, but she was afraid of the sewing machines, cutting fabric the wrong way, and the potential that sewing would have for bringing down her grade-point average. Every year, she managed to find a course conflict to avoid sewing classes. But the day after high school graduation, she took her graduation money to a fabric store, bought a kit to make a sweater, taught herself to read patterns and never looked back. These days, she knits a prayer shawl every month, along with sweaters, tote bags, gift bags and other goodies. She also designs many of her projects. Read More About PamE-mail Pam